


Shadow Play

by CaffieneKitty



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Humor, Boredom, Brothers, Crack, Episode Tag, Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, Gen, Sam in Hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-16
Updated: 2010-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-31 06:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1028221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffieneKitty/pseuds/CaffieneKitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things to do in Hell when you're bored.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadow Play

**Author's Note:**

> _Originally posted on Livejournal June 16, 2010_

They were all falling, and then they weren't. They hadn't landed, gravity just ceased to be relevant. Lucifer and Michael shot out of their vessels into their true forms as soon as the gate closed. For a while for Sam and Adam it was a little like being at the junction point where two lightsabers were clashing.

Sam regained sense first, grabbed Adam by the collar and pulled him off to a side, seeking an edge to the formless space they were in.

"You okay?" he asked when Adam started to wriggle.

After a long self-assessing pause Adam spoke. "Yeah."

"You sure?"

"That... that wasn't what I thought it would be."

"Never is," said Sam, towing Adam grimly away from the light.

-

"It's kind of like a really lame rave," Adam said after a while, leaning back on his hands.

Neither of them were sure how or when they had gotten to it, but they were seated on a rocky outcrop from a cave wall. They watched Lucifer and Michael clash in strobes of brilliant light.

Sam snorted. "Yeah, I guess. Hey," he swatted Adam's arm. "What's this?"

Adam turned away from the combat.

Sam held his hands up, palms towards the fighting angels, thumbs linked. The shadow they cast flickered on the wall behind them.

Raising both eyebrows, Adam looked at Sam.

"Come on, this is an easy one." He flexed his fingers and the shadow flapped as Sam trilled, making cooing noises.

"...You're insane."

"C'mon. Guess."

Adam shrugged. "It's a dove."

"Right!" Sam grinned. "Now you do one."

"Shadow puppets in Hell? Seriously?"

"You got anything better to do?"

-

Time passed.

"Bunny? Come on! It's obviously a python."

"It looks like a bunny doing a faceplant," said Adam.

Neither of them had noticed that their light source had stopped strobing.

{What are you doing?}

Adam froze and squinted into the light behind Sam

Sam didn't look up and continued making shadow-puppets in the bright angel-light. He shrugged with one shoulder. "Making shadow puppets."

}We are fighting for the fate of your world. You might want to pay attention.{

That was Lucifer; his voice still echoed down Sam's spine. "Nah," said Sam, then addressed Adam. "Now see, _this_ is a bunny doing a face-plant."

As his half-brother and the two angels watched, Sam made a fist with two fingers sticking straight up, hopped it across the wall a few feet then tipped it over forward with a small 'whoops!' noise.

Eyes wide, Adam looked from Sam to the angels behind them. "Uh. Yeah, okay, I see the difference now."

{You have strange priorities, where entertaining yourselves has more importance than-}

"Than what?" Sam frowned at his bunny-shadow. "Sitting around watching you two squabble while we work on our angel-light tans?"

{Yes} said Michael. {Sort of.}

"We are all in an escape-proof cage in Hell, and you two are fighting each other. What use is that? Does it even matter who wins? The winner's still stuck in the cage, and until it gets opened again -- which it never will, God willing -- no one is ever going to know who won. There is no point to you fighting."

{But Lucifer disobeyed-}

}Michael's an insufferable prat-{

"Stop." Sam snapped, not looking from the shadows he was making on the wall. "It doesn't matter. You're stuck, we're stuck. Trust me, I know a lot about being stuck in close quarters with family members who annoy the crap out of you. Not you, Adam."

Adam blinked.

Sam continued. "You must see that fighting each other is pointless."

The indescribable sensation of two powerful disembodied entities sulking washed over Sam and he felt a sudden empathy for his father. "Okay, look. Go run some laps, or spar if you really have to let off steam, but find something better to do with your time, because that's all we've got here."

The angels hung behind Sam and Adam for a while as Sam worked on perfecting his python shadow-puppet and ignored them. Adam seemed frozen in incredulity, staring off into the neutral distance, swallowing.

The light on the wall in front of Sam dimmed.

"What are they doing?" he whispered, letting his python-shadow drop but not looking back.

"Uh. They're uh. Doing laps. I think. Orbiting, anyway." The light flashed. "And maybe shoving each other a bit."

Sam's shoulders relaxed. "It's a start."

"Start of what?" asked Adam, watching the angels' progress.

"Brothers are brothers. Maybe if we can get them to realize that and stop trying to kill each other, there'll never be an Apocalypse."

Adam laughed. "You don't think small, do you?"

"It's something to do that might be useful." Sam grinned. "Your turn to make a shadow. Unless you've got a deck of cards stashed somewhere?"

"Nope," said Adam, turning his back to the slowly looping angels and folding his hands into a wolf.

\- - -  
(that's all.)


End file.
